Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 447: Jonathan Van Ness on Shame, Shopping, Bodies, and Hope

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

How do you find hope in a lifetime that has experienced more trauma than most? Guest Jonathan Van Ness says that the key is to stay curious and focus on happiness and joy, even if it’s just in a tiny corner.Jonathan Van Ness is a hairstylist by trade and best known as one of the hosts of the Netflix series Queer Eye. He is also the author of Love That Story and the New York Times bestselling memoir Over the Top, and the host of the podcast Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness. In this episode we talk about: The universality of processing griefWhat a “window of tolerance” means Getting curious about shameBody dysmorphiaJVN’s complex and contradictory feelings about shoppingWhat “parts therapy” or Internal Family Systems therapy isSetting boundariesConnecting and cultivating joy Content Warning: Explicit language and mentions of sexual abuse, substance amuse, body dysmorphia, and references to sex. Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/jonathan-van-ness-447See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Okay, kids, we've got a wild one for you today. Buckle up. This episode is hilarious, candid, profane, meaningful, pretty much everything I like in life. Jonathan Van Ness is perhaps best known as one of the stars of Queer Eye on Netflix, which is a great show. And he's great in it. Jonathan or JVN is a hairstyles by trade.

It also a comedian, podcaster and writer. JVN is just out with a second book called Love That Story, a follow up to the best seller called Over the Top in which JVN went to public on some called over the top in which JVN went to public on some extremely private issues, including being HIV plus, surviving sexual abuse, and recovering from drug addiction. In this very wide-ranging conversation, we talk about shame, body dysmorphism, trauma, Jonathan's complex and contradictory feelings about shopping. And we spend quite a bit of time on the subject of hope.

Hope is kind of a tricky topic for me, because it's often discussed in rather gauzy and insubstantial terms, but JVN talks about it in a really raw and fascinating and practical way. I should say hope is actually the theme of this week. We're going to be following up on Wednesday with a researcher who has studied hope and has science-based suggestions for cultivating hope as a mental skill. This is week two of our Mental Health Reboot series that we've launched

to Mark Mental Health Awareness Month. Every week, we're pairing a mental health memoirist with a scientist. We've done sleep this week at Hope, and we've got episodes coming up on loss, slash grief, and also on trauma, or how to live with some of the worst stuff that's ever happened to you. So there are like 40 trigger warnings I need to issue before we dive in here. If you don't like swear words, you're going to struggle with this episode. If you don't like left-leaming politics, beware. If you don't think grieving over the loss of a cat counts as real grief. I want to cover your ears. If you struggle with sexually explicit conversation, heads up

on that. And on a much more serious note, this interview also includes very frank discussions of sexual abuse, substance abuse, and body dysmorphia as mentioned earlier. If you want to cleaned up version of this episode with these where words bleeped, you can check it out on our website or on the 10% happier app. One last little bit of context here, you're going to hear Jonathan reference parts therapy or IFS or internal family systems that's a flavor of therapy where the therapist gets the patient to identify different aspects or parts of their personality and work with those different intercharacters. We've got a whole episode with the founder of IFS that we posted a few months ago.

We'll post a link to that in the show notes if you want to learn more. Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy

habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelli McGonical and the great meditation teacher Alexis Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay, on with the show. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. On my new podcast, Baby This is Kiki Palmer.

I'm asking friends, family, and experts, the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad. Where did memes come from? And where's Tom from, MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcast. Jonathan Van Ness, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me. I'm psyched to have you. I'm a fan, and really, I know that our listeners are going to love this. I thought I would start here, because in your new book, you do express some concern about the fact that interviewers often come charging right in and ask you about the worst stuff that ever happened to you in your life and I thought maybe would make sense to start with sending some ground rules like how do you feel about discussing this stuff. I don't want to commit the sins that others may have committed.

that others may have committed. Yeah, no, I mean, it wasn't like, I don't think anyone else really committed sins. It was just what I was really trying to get through in that chapter is that like I thought writing the book was going to be the hardest thing, but with practice comes more ability to like not become so attached to those experiences. So as Brunei Brown says, you know,

it's like can you talk about your trauma without becoming your trauma? I think at the time it was a lot harder for me to do that. And I think that with the practice I've had him, I think I'm better now. So go for honey. I'm laughing only at the honey part of that and not at the trauma, of course. But I just want to be sensitive to not just come barreling in. No, thank you. I appreciate that. Let's start with your cat, actually, because I'm a cat lover and owner myself. We recently just lost a cat.

I think people who are not into cats might not think losing a cat is that big of a deal. And yet you dedicate a lot of space in this new book to losing your cat. Can you talk about why that brought up so much for you? Well, yeah, I mean, I think it was a really traumatizing experience, like waking up and not being able to find your, one of your babies, and then realizing that they felt that their death, like, out of a window

is a very traumatizing experience, especially in the media aftermath, like, guilt and shame, because, like, I opened the window thinking that he would never be able to fit out of it and it was just like hot that night, you know, you think it would be okay. Or I thought it would be okay. And I always find it kind of smug when people who are parents are like, oh, I thought I knew what love was. You know, when I had a dog or a cat, but once I had my baby,

it was a different kind of love. And like, that's really when I knew it, I'm like, you smug asshole. Like, you're not fucking special for being like one of the billions of people who has brought a baby into the world. And whether you like adopted the kid or birthed the kid or whatever, I just feel that it's possible

to have that deep love and that deep connection with anyone who you are charged with protecting. And for me, it's been my cats and my dogs. And are they human? No, but I don't think that that invalidates or diminishes the connection. And actually, through getting curious, the TV show and the podcast, I got to interview this incredible philosopher. His name is Gabe Rosenberg.

And he talks about how we live in a country that brings into the world and kills 10 billion sentient beings a year. So it's like we're really desensitized to the killing in the death that we're around, not only with animals but with humans as well. So I think that for people who don't think it's a big deal, it's like we are desensitized to death, we're desensitized to loss because it's everywhere. One, two, you know, for me, my animals are my children, they're my family. And yeah, I mean, that was, I think it was the most traumatizing thing that's ever happened to me. It forced me to like have to work through extreme grief, which is really difficult. And I think that that's something that's universal, whoever you've lost,

like having to work and like have expectations on you when you have been through something really traumatic is a really difficult experience. And there's no roadmap for that. And I was keen to kind of process that grief because it was so big for me when I wrote it. And I still can tap into that grief really easily because it was just a really difficult experience. There are a couple of things you said there that I want to pick up on. Well, one in particular that I'd like to follow up on is you said that it might have been the most traumatizing thing that ever happened to you. That's interesting, given that you have written about sexual abuse, getting a devastating or at least jarring diagnosis of HIV positive, and yet the death of the cat may be shook you more.

You know, having my cat die like that is the most traumatizing thing that's ever happened to me. And I watched my stepdad die in the living room and I'm HIV positive. And it was the cat. And I think it's because with HIV with the loss of my stepdad, I knew that those were possibilities because of things that were happening in my life. So I had a little bit of anticipatory grief and ability to process it before it happened.

Whereas with Bug the Second, there was no reason for me to ever believe when I woke up that morning that that's gonna be what was gonna happen. I just didn't know. And he was just such a sweet cat. He was not even a year yet. And he and Larry, my oldest cat,

were just like such a huge part of my life. And I was so nervous about over the top, which was like about to come out like a month later when the accident bugged the second happened. So I was already in a really vulnerable time. I never really worked that hard. I never had like so much pressure and then to lose bug the second was just like,

it was really a cute pain that I had no way of knowing I was gonna endure. And also I think that like, when you are really attached to your animals because people are assholes, that's the other thing. It's like there was so much people don't understand. And maybe if I was in a different time in my life,

that wouldn't have been as traumatizing, but I do think that becoming such a public facing figure, just being about to disclose my HIV status to the world while filming a show, which is a lot of hours and a lot of work, my window of tolerance was not very big for what I could tolerate. And then one of the worst things that could happen, like to a family, I lost someone in my family was like awful. So yeah.

You've also written and I'm going to quote you back to you, but that the death of bug brought up and this is the quote brought up so much compounded shame and other losses in my life that I hadn't even realized that I was still internally processing. Yeah, because it's like even bug the second was, bug the second my other cat lies in me on Ellie. We're like kind of knee jerk reactions to my first cat, bug the first passing away, but he had passed away at 12 and I talked about him in this chapter. That's how I got my like Charlotte's web rule of cats.

It's like if one cat passes away, I go get two because it's like harder to like be sad about the loss of one cat when you have like two more kittens to take care of. I think what I realized from this chapter is that I'm not a big fan of Greece. Don't love sitting with it. You know, it's like, don't love to sit with it. Sitting with grief is hard. You talk about having a window of tolerance, which was a phrase that I believe one of your therapists gave to. Yes. I just didn't have a very big window tolerance. So really, I think because I adopted Bug the Second, I adopted Liza right after Bug the First passed away.

And when Bug the First died, it's like everything I went through when Bug the First was alive, like getting HIV, losing my stepdad Steve, breaking up with that first partner that I was so level surging that I talk about in both my books, I had gone through all of that with Bug the First.

And so losing him, it was sad because it's like we just went through a lot of these things together. And I thought that a lot of those things was like, I just felt fully processed and complete on. And then when Bug the Second passed away, it kind of felt like it opened that wound of the grief of Bug the First and everything that we had kind of been through together. And I think that that's one of the things about grieving that we learn is that processing grief and the grieving process is not linear. Like you can be in a place of acceptance for a long time about something and then something can happen in your life that can then again pull you right back to that shock, despair, you know, denial, bargain, all of those steps of grieving.

And I think that's what I was trying to describe in that chapter. The Charlotte's Web Rule is something that my wife and I have followed in generally. We've ended up with a lot of cats through the Charlotte's Web Rule, so I get it. Another thing you say in the book when talking about your difficulty, and I think this is a pretty common difficulty of not wanting to sit with grief, is realizing that grief is the flip side of love that you can't have the grief without the love. Yeah, and so that's really the choice that we're left with. It's like, do you make yourself an island and not reach out for the connection and not experience that connection because inevitably we're going to lose it at some point.

Or do you take that risk of the vulnerability and ask for the connection and build the connection knowing that you're gonna lose it? And for me, I'm still very much in that latter camp of like, I'm gonna take the chance because it's just, I feel like that's ultimately what we're here for. And it's like there's so many kitty cat cooters

as I call it that need homes. So like I need to like, you know, but that is why I don't foster, because I do think that if I was a foster parent for kittens, and I'm sure that foster people are like, oh no, it's not like that. You really, you love like adopting them out because it not means that you know,

you're making room for more. And it's like, no, I want 75 million cats. Cause deep down, like I think I am a little bit of like, a cat hoarder who wants to have enough space. I don't want them to eat each other, be like that episode of hoarders where the guy had the rats, but with cats. You know what I'm saying? So I don't want anything bad to happen to them, but if I could safely provide for 75 million cats, I would. I could have a house that big,

and they could all have like their own space, and we could, you know, have that care and stuff, and it was like clean. I just love cats. I love them so much, I can't stand it. They're just so perfect in every way. I think we may have this in common, my friend. We've been talking about our relationship to others

thus far in this brief discussion, but you also talk, I think, in a very compelling way about your relationship to yourself, specifically about shopping and also body issues. But let me start with shopping. Why is shopping in fashion, Kutur is such a fraught issue for you? Well, I think it's because when you become a public figure

and you have as much interactions with folks on the internet and you just become aware of so many people. My world got a lot bigger in becoming JVN. I'm aware of so many more people. I'm aware of so many more things, issues, etc. There is this really strong part within me that really wants to help people, so that's one part of you. There's this other part that has always been really into chic, cute stuff that I couldn't afford.

Cause I was like a baby queer looking at these magazines and like, how am I gonna afford the jeans that are like, those jeans are everything, that bags everything, but these price tags are like, I'm never gonna be able to afford this stuff. Like, so there are all things that I like wrote off. As far as like being able to be someone who would afford cool stuff

and I just didn't even think it was that cool because I like wrote it off. When I started to make money, every like three to six months of me having since like queer I happened and like having obviously the financial resources that have come with becoming like a public figure, it took me a year to realize that I could afford a house. It was like literally a whole year. It was like early 2019 and I was like, this means you could get a house. It was literally a whole year. It was like early 2019 and I was like, ah, this means you could get a house. It literally didn't occur to me. Like cool purses did not, I was like, what, I can, I can, no.

Like it took me like a long time to figure out that like all of a sudden I had the ability to get stuff that like I previously had been like out of my reach. And in in parts therapy, we talk about different parts of a personality that can be polarized with each other. And I feel like on the one, my helping part that wants to be selfless and help people is polarized with my compulsive shopping part.

And they're kind of in juxtaposition of each other's goals. So it's like, they cause me to get into a lot of rhetorical fireworks around questioning this compulsive need to get cute garments, even if I already have like other garments that are very similar. Like how many bags does one person need? Purses are my kryptonite, and it really does feel like drugs in some way, because it's

like you like, I won't, I'm not doing the math, I'm not doing it. Like it's like I'm not doing it, I'm fighting that crater, I'm not doing it, and then you do it, and then you're like, it's like your guilt, the shame, like why am I doing this? Like I'm not vibrating at the frequency that I know that I should be, except for the biggest difference that, you know,

purses aren't met, and then that's what I tell myself. So I'm like, girl, these purses aren't met, honey. They're person. And the people who are selling those persons need a job, not to mention its art, like its literal art and science, like being able to weave and sew and cut into its art, and its supporting art, which is not met. So, it kind of is like that.

I hope I'm not like spoiler alerting, like making people like not wanna read the chapter, because there's actually a lot more to it in that essay. It's a racuous essay, a lot of fun. But yeah, there is a lot of shame there, because I just feel like, and also like capitalism, like that first part of me knows

that wants to be a helper of people, knows that capitalism is like unfair and ashamed and is bullshit, but then that other part of me that really likes bags is like, but how are you going to get the botega if you don't do the capitalism? You know, so they're just in constant fight with each other. How do you reconcile it? You mentioned parts therapy, which we've also talked on the show. I think it's sometimes called internal family systems where you... Yes, internal family systems, IFS. I talk all about it and over the top.

Yeah, so I think I reconcile it by like, that there can be duality and there can be like, two truths that exist simultaneously. I can help people and be really selfless with my time and my money, which I am a lot. And I can also be someone who like indulges in the purse. I can do both, because like, really, I wanna be like a super egalitarian, like Mary Kay and Ashley. You know what I mean? I can do both because like really I want to be like a super egalitarian, like

Mary Kay and Ashley, you know what I mean? I want to be both, like super egalitarian, but then also super like I'm sorry my sweater is like made of like Alpaca hair that's like you know the finest Alpaca that's only ever had like organic grass and hopefully Alpacas don't die for the hair, but you know what I'm saying? Like it's just like, you know, I wanna be both. It's like we can be both and we don't have to pick either or. So that's kind of how I reconcile it. I'll let you know as I mature if that changes. Cause maybe when I get a little older,

I'm gonna be like really ashamed of this interview and I'm gonna be like, you know, I sold all my shit. I only have like T-shirt dresses, no. And I like don't eat it at all. To folks in need, like cats in need. So I'll let you know, it could happen, but it also might not happen. You brought up shame there.

Shame is a recurring theme for you. Can you say a little bit more about the role of shame in your life and how you work with it? The way it was explained to me is that shame is like the fear of like if people knew your true heart or like your true nature, like they would no longer love you or like want to be your friend or like, you know, or as I'd say, and over the top one, that selfie or whatever. Because no matter who you are, we've all experienced rejection in some form.

Even for the most like narcissistic person who really believed in their narcissism was like, I have never been rejected. Like people at, you know, I'm never experienced trauma. Like I've gotten everything I wanted, I made every team I ever wanted. Like I just haven't experienced rejections. Because we know those people that like are so afraid of their own stuff that they like won't look at it, can't acknowledge it.

Not that all of those people are narcissists, but like there are like traits in both of those types of people that can overlap. But even as like a baby as a kid, we all experience rejection that you may not even remember. We have all been rejected. But the rejection and the pain that it causes is all relatives. Some people's rejections don't cause such intense traumatic responses as other people do. So that's okay. So all of our relationships with shame might be less clear

or might be like less polarizing because, you know, maybe your trauma was more like some rolling, gorgeous, ideal like hills, whereas other people's trauma is like, you know, the Himalaya or the Rockies. You know, you had some peaks and valleys in there. So your relationship to shame is more intensely recurring. So that's, I think what it is, is that a lot of the shame that we learn is when we're very young and our formative years of our earliest psyche.

So it's in there. And I think that for people who are survivors of big tea tramas, my therapist would say, or are from a marginalized community that would experience more shame than say, like a cis-hat white man, and not that cis-hat white men can't experience shame because they do, and they do

experience rejection. And I think that actually, I think their shame can be further intensified because of the toxic gender binary and the toxic masculinity and toxic masculinity that accompanies the expectations of this toxic gender binary that is so rigid in its expectations of men and women. And so I'm not just missing the pain of cis-hat men or cis-hat women, but I will say cis-hat white women and cis-hat white men rather. But if you are from a more marginalized community, you will probably experience more rejection, more trauma, thus have more shame. Because this world wasn't wired or created for the acceptance intolerance of queer people,

or black people, or brown people, or disabled people, or fat people, or trans people. This world was wired for the acceptance of white folks. White cis-hate Christian folks. That is how this society that we live in was wired. People are trying to change it myself included, but it was still wired for white, cis-het, Christian people. So I think that for people that don't fall into that category, the experience of shame is going to be more reoccurring because we've had to deal with it more.

So I think that's kind of why shame is such a reoccurring thing and I see the ways that shame kills people who I love and kills people from my community. You know, shame is part of stigma in HIV. Shame is part of the stigma of transphobia because people are so ashamed that actually everyone is like a little baby bit, gender non-conforming in trans.

Like we all have a little bit of that in us but people are so ashamed of what that might look like. You know, they acknowledge that. So shame kills people all the time. And I don't like it. And I think that you can't heal what you keep hidden in shame. So I'm kind of interested in like bringing to light the things which bring us shame.

And treating it, if I understand you correctly, treating it or relating to that shame with its opposite, which is love. Yeah, acceptance, compassion, curiosity, I think, is like a little bit of an antidote. Big fan of curiosity. It's fun. Because it's like, why do I feel like this? And then you can like get curious about it and try to contextualize. And also not only contextualize, unblend or like pull apart from the shame because we are not our shame. We are like humans who are capable of so much love and so much compassion. We are such multi-layered, incredible vessels that we are not our shame.

We are the observer of that shame. We are the observer of our feelings. That's really what our highest self is. We are the observer of the happenings in our life. We are not what happens to us. You know, we are the observer of that. And I think creating that distinction is so healing. Much more with Jonathan Van Ness right after this.

Like, the short and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is Short, with Justin Long.

If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions, like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people

about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs. And sometimes more importantly, the lows of their careers. We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times. But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff. Like, if you had a sandwich named after you, what would be on it? Follow Life is short wherever

you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. People in my experience generally don't get perfect at this, but how good are you at bringing curiosity, compassion, love to your own stuff on a day-to-day basis? It depends on the week, at the day, but I am pretty good at it. I mean, sometimes I totally get lost, I'll get caught up, I call it Vanessa, and usually that's because I'm triggered, and I have a protector that's come out, you know, feeling unsupported. I feel like I've been taken advantage of. And whether or not that's true, in a lot of cases it is true that I haven't taken advantage

of. But sometimes my boundary setting can become disproportionate to what happened because of that trauma and the shame. And I think that for a lot of us, especially that are survivors of abuse, setting a boundary was like not tolerated and like wasn't possible for so much of our life that then once you do start setting a boundary, it's like it just comes out like really intense when you really just could ask for what you needed up front but it's hard sometimes because it learning

how to balance that is hard. But I get better at it all the time. Yeah, I can see how that would be a really tough balance, because you're training a whole new muscle there. So, one area that for people, and again, this is something we talk about in the show a lot, one area where a lot of people feel a lot of shame is as it relates to their bodies and you talk about that quite a bit. Can you just give us a little history for you in terms of your relationship to your

own body? How has that been and how is it now? Sure, it's been a long relationship with my body. I talk a lot about it in both of my books. It's so complicated because we all have bodies. We all have a relationship to our body. And we also all are exposed to the world. Media, TV, everything. society, our friends, family. So we all have a completely different and unique relationship to our own body and to the world. So that's a lot of commonality for people to just even talk about.

Because a lot of stuff, it's like, oh, I don't really like gardening. I don't care about purses. I don't care about cats. And it's like, we all care about our body. It's the one we got, and it's something that unites all of us for all of our differences and all the things that make us different, we all got one because you're talking about

it, right? So it's a big subject and it makes it very complicated because for all of the ways in which we're different, that factors into our relationship with our body, gender, sexuality, race, class, age. It's going to affect everybody differently. So it's a very complicated topic where folks can go from like zero to 100 really quick. And also what can be a compliment for one person is really like backhanded and fucked up to another, which is so much of what I'm talking about in that essay about body neutrality.

It's like stop calling me brave, I'm hot. People are like you're so confident, which is so much of what I'm talking about, not essay about body neutrality. It's like stop calling me brave, I'm hot. People are like, you're so confident, you're so brave, you know, you're such an inspiration, and it's like, why? Because you think that if you had a body like mine, you'd never be cut dead in a shirt like this. You'd never be cut dead in an outfit like this. How do you think that makes me feel that that's what you're telling me?

It's not a compliment. You think you're being nice, which are actually being a fucking nightmare, especially when someone in a public facing space, like me is hearing this and seeing it in comments like thousands of times, you know? So it actually, it's frustrating as a public figure that aspect. And that's why I wrote this essay in the book

because it's just being labeled and like finding yourself a body positive in air quotes icon. It's just like a lot of pressure for someone who's actually like, wait, I'm a hot mess. I'm maybe I'm that, but I'm also like all these other things and like, it's a lot to process. So historically my relationship with my body wasn't good. I struggled with binge eating. I struggled with body dysmorphia, bulimia, and it was difficult. And then that kind of evolved to like different versions of like restriction, working out, like compulsively working out, you know, and then just continued

binge eating. So it's further complicated because like I'm not healed. I'm not where I need to be. I still struggle. I still, with eating and binging, don't struggle with purging, which is fierce for me, but you know, whatever. It's like people are still really struggling with it. People are also really triggered by just this conversation. But I also feel like back to that shame conversation,

we can't heal what we don't talk about. So it is better. I have better, but I also am still really confused. I'm still learning more about fat phobia. I'm still learning about I also am still really confused. I'm still learning more about fat phobia. I'm still learning about the intersections of fat phobia, but it's a conversation that I want to have. It's a conversation that affects my life and also the lives of a lot of people who my love. And so it's a conversation I want to keep having real like body image and shame and what that means. But you struggle, it sounds a little bit with having that conversation when you yourself

don't feel fully healed. It's not that I struggle to have the conversation. I think that I more struggled to comprehend how daunting of a healing process it is for like everyone at large. But it's like I still want to be a part of that conversation and it's hard to know how to stay in your lane and like not fuck up when you don't know what you don't know. But I think that's what I also try to talk about that essay that it's like, I don't know what I don't know. And I try to be open about not knowing what I don't know. And so this isn't me preaching. This isn't me telling you how to do it. I'm telling you

what's happened with me. A few months ago, we had Jim Bill, a Jim Bill on the show, and she likes to talk about body neutrality instead of body positivity. As I understand it, you share that view. Yeah, because it's like, really, we shouldn't be attaching our worth to the way that people look and we need to like disentangle that, which it's really enmeshed the way that we equate value to the way that people look. It's interesting because I have done quite publicly here on the show quite a bit of work on rearranging and rethinking, reframing my relationship to my own body, especially as I get older.

And I'm only now really seeing clearly the connection between how nasty I still can be to myself around like my abs or lack thereof now and how that really transforms into how judgmental I am of other people. The suffering I'm inflicting upon myself, like almost inevitably and inexorably becomes the suffering I inflict upon other people. Hopefully I don't say any of that aloud, but I just see it happening in my mind and that's bracing. I don't know if any of that resonates with you.

Absolutely, and I think that's like such authentic communication that I think is so helpful. I think that, so thanks for sharing that. And it's great, it absolutely resonates with me. You know, that's a trauma response. What you just described is like, oh, I take out that trauma that I've looked upon myself like on other people, like in terms of like,

you know, it's a lot loud, but it's like I catch myself thinking it or whatever. For me, it's more of like, I would never talk about other people the way that my brain talks about myself. And I often like to joke that you know, I've never met like a dick over the age of 25 that I couldn't find something that I was like, okay, like I just did a little like,

I am just dick crazy. If you got one and you're like over the age of 25, like just did a little, I am just dick crazy. If you got one and you're like over the age of 25, like I can find something, you know, as a sex worker, I was also like really starved for dick is like a teenager and like someone, you know, coming from a corn field in the middle of America. So I think because I was so starved for dick

and being able to like be open about my love of it that now like is in my adulthood, I'm just like, I love Dix. If you got one, let me see it. I'm curious, getting curious is, I love adult Dix all the way up to really adult Dix. If you're giving me principal vibes, I'm curious. If you're giving me, I am.

Even if you're a grandpa, honey, but you hit the gem honey, if you're one me like, you know, I am. Like, it's like, even if you're like a grandpa honey, but you hit the gem honey, if you're like kind of one of those like saucy, like business suit wearing, like, get over here honey, let's talk about it, you know. So, yeah, like I like all sorts of different types honey. I just can find beauty and I really do see beauty. And maybe it's also kind of a hairdresser

we're like trained to find the beauty and people, you know? I'm gonna make a conversational leap here, but hopefully it makes sense to you because picking up on what you just said about finding the beauty, at least to me, a through line of your work appears to be, and I don't know how you feel about this word, but hope, because you have talked consistently

about all of the difficult things you've endured in your life, and yet you're still in the mix, and you get back up and keep going for it. So I'm wondering if that word is important to you, hope. So important to me, not to be a buzzkill. I don't know if you can teach hope the way that I have hope, because I have like some blind faith, honey. Like I got some faith and it's, I've seen it happen. Like I don't know why I have the faith. Cause I've also seen it not happen. I've also been like sorely disappointed.

And then still can be like so hopeful for something. I think it's because I've seen, sometimes some people are like, they would ask about like my career. Like how, like did you ever think that this would happen? Like did you ever think that this could happen to your life? And I would be like, no, I definitely never thought that I would be where I am.

And I never would have thought that I would have done accomplished what I've accomplished. But I also never thought it couldn't happen. Like I wasn't working and efforting to become like an unscripted reality star and like you know, well actually after gay off throws I was. But before that, it's like one thing at a time kind of happened that led me to be able to like find where I am now. I was like one thing after another after another that eventually found me here. But I never thought that I couldn't heal or like recover from myth. I never thought that that I couldn't become who I am. So it's like hope is a really big word

because it can be small. Like it can be little in there somewhere. It doesn't have to like totally drive you. But if it's in there somewhere, you can always like come back to it and find it. And I don't think I ever really lost touch with my hope at brief moments of letting it go, but I always came back. And I think that's really important.

You said earlier at the beginning of the answer that you're not sure it's teachable, it may be something innate in you, but are there practices that you rely on to keep hope alive, to use a little bit of a cliche there? It's joy. It's really hard to be hopeful if you don't connect to your joy. And I think that even when I wasn't in a place of like recovery or even when I wasn't in a place of like necessarily like labeling it as a time of like healing, I've always been like very inclined to find something that makes me happy. Like whether it was yoga or like collecting rocks as a kid or becoming

obsessed with figure skating as a kid. I've always had a part in me that like wanted to be oriented to like finding joy, because I always knew that if I like found joy, it would like get me away from like an unsatisfactory experience that I was like in the middle of. And I've learned that from a really young age because I was very rejected as a young kid.

I was very bullied. I was going through sexual abuse. I was like going through a lot of rejection everywhere I turned around. So I kind of like had to create a world of joy and hope that I could like connect to. If you don't know where your hope is and you're like in the throes of your darkness or your whatever you're going through, I think orienting yourself to like do something that will bring you joy. Even if you don't end up experiencing joy, but even just like building upon like the act of seeking out the joy, even if you don't end up experiencing joy, but even just like building upon the act of seeking out the joy,

even if you don't get it, I think that is how you can cultivate that pathway to joy in your brain by embarking on it in the first place. That does seem like a practice anybody can do, no matter how much the situation in your life sucks, knowing that the capacity for joy, happiness, pleasure is still there, and trying to exercise that muscle sounds like a way out of some pretty dark holes, potentially. Much more with Jonathan Van Ness right after this.

How well are you able to muster hope in the face of the problematic stuff going on in the world at large? Ask me after midterms. Right now I'm still feeling hopeful. If we experience a midterms of 2010, again, I might have to take all the queer youth and kidnap them to like Canada or something. Like I don't know what's going to, I don't know. It seems a little more, uh, more scary now, but I'm still hopeful of until November. So we got to get it together.

Local Democrats, come on. Let's do this. Gotta get our local policy together. You can't see a world in which, and because historically, the trends seem clear, usually the party that holds the White House loses pretty big in the midterms, you can't see a world in which that isn't utterly disastrous. Oh, no, I can see a world where it would just be absolutely totally disastrous. Like, I think it would be a fucking disaster. Like Like would we live? Yes. Would the sun come up? Yes. But like for marginalized communities, their lives will not improve in the way that I mean in blue states, it won't be like as bad with a Republican controlled house because like you still have like your your state congress,

your state ledge rather and your no your local governments are going to make like a bigger impact than like Congress and blue states. But in red states, where there are so many queer people and there are so many already marginalized LGBTQIA plus people, it's a disaster. Because they already have red state ledges. So like a federal oversight on those people so that they have someone that they can call on is so important. So I do think that it would be a disaster if we lost the house in the Senate.

And I think that we've accomplished so much. I know that a lot of people don't feel like it's enough, but I feel like we have accomplished so much. And there's so much more to do. And I just hope that we can work together on the left to get more people to turn out. Because it still baffles me the presidential election of 2020. Like it had the highest voter turnout in such a long time. And it was still like, what was it?

It was like 80 million votes to 75 million votes. So that's 80 plus 75. There's like 155. And there's like 330 million people that still like is like around. It's like a little bit above 50%. But it's like how can we invigorate that other 50% of people that just do not turn out to vote?

And I think it really comes down to education because I feel like we don't have civic civil education, so people don't know how much local and state governments affect them, and they don't understand how much Congress affects their local congressional representative affects them. Like they just don't get it, and affects their local congressional representative, affects them. They just don't get it. And that's a failure of schools.

And it's also a failure by design, by Republicans, to get us in this. Because when we've divested from education, we've divested from infrastructure, divested from healthcare, it makes people sick and fucking stupid, and not that everyone's sick and stupid. But it's like like it keeps the people in power and power because people aren't empowered with the knowledge that they need to make better choices for themselves. So we got to get ahead of it.

I don't know exactly how we're going to, but I do have faith and I do hope that we will and I just really hope that we will and can. Let's end on this. One thing you talk about is your embrace of complexity and Contradiction and that two things can be true at the same time. I'm gonna quote you a little bit back to you a few quotes that I kind of cherry pick together because I think they kind of fit into this theme One is only in hindsight can I see that I achieved my dreams because of not in spite of all of the bumps in the road Another is I'm constantly trying to deepen my understanding

of the world and acknowledge that good and bad can coexist and that we will never be able to just snap our fingers and put everything in its place. And finally, I wanted to show people that joy can live beside sorrow and that sadness doesn't invalidate your right to experience happiness. So I throw those quotes from you at you and I invite you to sort of hold forth if you're open to it. Yeah, I mean, one like, you know why am I such a good

writer? And two, and two, it's like, I think especially the last piece I need to hear, I put so much pressure on myself to try to heal the world. And if the worst does happen at midterms, it's like I'm still allowed to experience joy, like in the face of sadness and darkness. It's just like so disappointing because it's just so disappointing what I think about like the midterm thing. And it's like I'll personally be okay, I'll be okay. I got money.

I got a house. I'm like, I'll be fine. It's like all of the like young and older queer people who want and who will lose access to health care, who their lives become harder because of their elected leadership. And that's who I fight so hard for. So yeah, I think it's complex. There's a duality. I'm going to keep up the fight.

And I'll keep acknowledging those truths as I move forth in the world. You applied it to politics there, but in your own life, aside from politics, sort of your internal politics, your internal parts, your internal family systems and the different parts of JVN that are within your own mind. There's the JVN, we see on Netflix, and then there's the JVN who gets really sad. It seems like coming to an understanding

that a lot of stuff can be happening at the same time. The full catastrophe can be playing out and it all can be okay. That seems like a very important conclusion for you. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if the conclusion that is like there can be a catastrophe and it can be okay at the same time. I think that it's like there can can be a catastrophe, and I can find peace at the same time.

I don't know if I would necessarily believe a catastrophe is like, and it's okay, it's like, I think it's like, you can find peace, even if there's something really difficult going on, or find some sort of acceptance and something even in the face of a catastrophe is more clear for me anyway. Point well taken. Is there anything I should have asked you that I didn't ask you? Anything you want to touch on

that I didn't give you an opportunity to touch on? Just like, how do you deal with waking up that gorgeous? As a heterosexual man, like I don't, you know, it's like, it's like, I just, it's like, it's like, just like your hair, you know, your hair is so pretty and it's like, like your beard, it's like, it's like, it's like, your hair, your hair is so pretty, and it's like, you're beard,

it's like, you're just so symmetrical. It's fine that you didn't ask those things, like, how did you get so symmetrical? How did you get so perfect, why are you're teeth are so cute? I don't know, it's like, I floss. I do, I'm really in the skin care. No, I do think that, as far as the book,

I was really moved by my experience about writing about the star care and chapter and kind of my relationship with my father. I was really candid about my relationship with my dad and I think that's like what I think about hope. It's like sometimes I wish, you know, my dad's conservative man has historically really voted Republican and it's like, I wish that I could like move

his dial like further left, but he always says, you know, it's like, I wish that I could like move his dial like further left. But he always says, you know, it's like, you've moved me from like a one to like a five. I might not be like a, you know, liberal, but I'm a lot more over on the dial that I used to be. And I'm really proud of him that I let him like read that essay before I, you know, released to obviously I didn't want him to feel like really taken off guard, but for anyone out there that's listening to this, it's having a hard relationship with a family member who's voting for people that diet medically oppose your existence. That's a really hopeful chapter and I hope that people feel empowered to keep having

uncomfortable conversations with people and their family and that they can use some tools in that essay and people with their life. Because really ultimately what queer people need, what queer youth need, what queer people, young and old need is for people that are allies to take these conversations into spaces that would be uncomfortable, to take these conversations to members of your family that it might not go over so smooth and be able to like have a calm, clear, loving conversation with them to hopefully move that dial. So I hope that people can take that from that essay and employ that in their life. That's incredibly important.

I salute the work you're doing. I love watching you in Netflix. I love talking to you today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks again to Jonathan. As I told you, that was a fun one. Thank you as well to everybody who

worked so hard on this show. Gabrielle Zuckerman, DJ Cashmere, Justine Davey, Maria Wartell, Samuel Johns, and Jen Poyant. And we get our audio engineering from the good folks over at ultraviolet audio. One note before we go, I do want to do something here in support of an organization founded upon the breakthrough work of my friend, the world-renowned neuroscientist, Dr. Richard Davidson, he goes by Richie, Richie's cutting edge work, uses scientific principles to prove that meditation can actually train our minds

and change our minds to make us better, happier humans. The organization is called healthy minds innovations, and the mission is to create a kinder, wiser, and more compassionate world through the cultivation of well-being. And they are looking for a leader who will set a clear vision for the next chapter and maximize the global impact of the organization. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to hminevations.org.

You can go to hminevations.org. We'll see you all on Wednesday for our part two of our weeklong series on Hope. We're going to talk to a scientist Jacqueline Mattis who has researched evidence-based ways for cultivating hope as a skill. And don't forget this is just week two of our four-week mental health reboot series that runs all the way through May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. So we've got weeklong series coming up on grief and also on trauma. So a lot more to come. I hope you stick with us for the whole thing. We'll see you on Wednesday for Jacqueline Madness. Hey, hey prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music.

Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash Survey.